Open-Secrets

Tag: meditation

  • Orienting the Work in Time

    Orienting the Work in Time

    Time has no moments

    The journey isn’t moving forward in time – dynamic forces at work can be interpreted by the mind as movement – explore these forces

    Prior to me asking this question, where are you?

    There are millions of words written and spoken about being in the NOW. People aspire to be in the moment. The moment is magical according to some.

    Think about it: a point in time is related to as a place because the self is inserting itself into that time, making it a place on the time map.

    When we’re projecting the past into the present or future, we’re doing so in the moment. So, where’s the magic? It’s confusing because you’ve never been anywhere else except in the moment!

    According to some, like Adyashanti, the real trick is that the mind can obscure our perception of reality. As he and others say, It’s not about getting somewhere, it’s about exploring what’s blocking our perception of reality right NOW in this moment.

    One hurdle is pleasure.

    We all know about the ego and its enslavement to the pain/pleasure principle. On one side of the coin the issue is that Being is inherently pleasurable. On the other side, the issue is separation from Being is suffering. 

    So, when Being is obscured, pain and suffering color the consciousness. The ego-self wants to fix it by getting what’s missing, to get there, to get into the moment with that pleasurable, suffering-free experience.

    “Getting” (seeking) is the foundational orientation of the self. It’s future oriented. All of its hopes, dreams and desires are out there in the future, but all of that wishing and dreaming is happening in the moment.

    For a moment let’s entertain the self’s orientation and explore just how confused it is about reality and the journey.

    Here is the timeline of your life:

    To the self, enlightenment is located in time somewhere between where you are and the end of time and it needs to get there, to get it.  But, the enlightened say, “Enlightenment is exactly where you are right now, in this moment.” 

    Here’s a more accurate illustration of the self’s position on the timeline of your life and its relationship to reality.

    prior to self

    The green field is Being or awareness or consciousness. It underlies and permeates your entire existence. In fact, it’s all Being, through and through. It has no extension in time, it has always been and always will be. It’s pure, complete, perfect and timeless.

    The dots after birth represent the period in time where your body existed, but your “self” did not. The sense of you developed. It takes five to seven years after birth. It’s a process.

    Once the self is constructed, it inserts itself into all of your (body/Being) experience claiming that it has always been in your life and has had something to do with everything in your life, your entire history is its claim. It believes it makes choices, thinks, takes action, etc. 

    These things happen, but not from or by the self. It claims ownership in a nano, nano, nano, nano second after the event. It’s so fast, it’s pretty much instantaneous. So fast, the mind can’t register it. Neuroscience is validating this.

    We believe the self is needed to function in the world. It’s not and you’re living proof of that because you (body/Being) did just fine for several years without the self. Our beliefs and convictions on the necessity of the self for functioning are misunderstandings and ignorance of what’s really going on.

    Invest some sincerity and impeccability in this exercise:

    Pull out some old photos of you from 5-years-old back to birth. Spend some time with each and allow memories and stories to come forward. Be with the sense of yourself as you ponder them. Feel the feelings, sensations and energies. Observe the thoughts and felt sense of being in that time.

    What’s your earliest memory? Can you feel the familiar sense of “you” in your past? How far back in your life as you look at the pictures can you get a sense of “you”?  5? 4? 3? 2? 1?

    When you look at those baby pictures, do you get a connected sense of you at that moment that extends forward in time to now?

    Here’s the point – you, the self, didn’t exist back then. The closer you get to five or six, the more you, the self, wafts into and out of existence, but it’s not stable until six or so.

    That two-year-old toddling around, eating, speaking the first words, sleeping, crying, doing all the things we do at two is pretty much doing it all without the self and it’s all happening in a developmentally appropriate way. The self will assert that it’s needed to mature, develop potential and function. This is true to some extent, but it’s a lease situation not a purchase. It’s time to terminate the lease agreement.

    The point is that, if anything, enlightenment in terms of “getting” it from the self’s orientation is not in the future, it’s in the past prior to the self. The self is heading in the wrong direction! Talk about confused!

    Working with object relations and psychodynamics is a regressive process. It peels the onion, removing the layers history, beliefs and identifications. This process can feel like going back in time to a priori, but is really a process that allows what is present, but obscured to emerge into consciousness.

    What psychodynamics allow us to do is study what we’re not. As an orientation or process, this allows us to get off the treadmill to the future and bring our attention and awareness to our immediate experience. Of course, the self will want to coopt the study of what we’re not to “get something out of it” and continue moving toward the future, but we can pull the treadmill out from under the self by exploring that very thing.

    If we hear and understand Adyashanti’s, Tolle’s, Almaas’s, and others’ message, it serves us better to get off the treadmill and explore the moment we’re always in.

    The Power of Object Relations

    This is where working with object relations really rewards us because doing so is one of the most elegant and efficient means of “rending the veils.” We could spend ten, twenty, thirty years or more meditating to pierce what’s in the way or we could avail ourselves of psychodynamic spiritual technology that can do so in days or weeks.

    meditation of self

    This is not to say embodied enlightenment will arise in short order, but one can experience and embody presence and spiritual states as part of a process of working through conditioning, which produces positive effects in our day-to-day life.

    At first, the effects and affect of essence and essential qualities arising in the body/mind are “my” experience, as the claiming is that fast. It takes some time before we recognize experience as happening in the soul and see the body/mind as the agency of perception, extension and expression.

    Again, the string we need to work with is right here, right now because the nature of reality is continuous revelation.

    Here’s the core issue with the self and enlightenment:

    Self cannot get out of self.

    It’s really simple. Every action of self reinforces self. How then, can self get out of self? 

    When you’re meditating, if you’re orienting toward some goal, or preference, or the future – that is the self meditating. This is how meditation begins for everyone.

    Speaking of meditation, what is successful meditation? Being in the NOW? Being full of presence? Some spiritual state? NO, successful meditation is coming back, coming back, coming back… The circuits are being rewired, the smaller pile of sand is growing bigger – more on this later. In thirty minutes of meditation, if you come back once, a hundred times or are gone, gone, gone – that is successful meditation. Putting your butt in the chair is 80%.

    The self can explore self, can get curious about experience. What we really are – awareness – evolves, unfolds, disidentifies without getting anything. It emerges from the background into the foreground via space and curiosity as it is – awareness.

    Self is self-referencing. It lives in a house of one-way mirrors where it only sees itself, everything reflected in self-centeredness. Self cannot see reality, but reality, self-aware awareness, can see self – it is the seeing, not the seer or the seen.

    house of mirrors self

    Here’s an exercise that works better the older you are:

    Have you ever looked in the mirror and had a moment of: geez, I don’t feel that old? This is an experience of timeless awareness, what you really are, being aware of itself. It has nothing to do with memory – check it out!

    Play around with it. Keep your vision loose. Split your attention 20/80 between the mirror and the seeing, not the seer and the seen. See if the sense of timeless awareness moves more forward into consciousness. Relax, grasping at it, shoos it away. 

    Up Next…

    How Object Relations Control Relating

  • Hacking YOUR Orientation to Reality

    Hacking YOUR Orientation to Reality

    Where you’re looking from can be the issue

    Beliefs, mental conditioning, attitudes, habits and the like aren’t the only elements in the human experience that need to be addressed on the journey of realization. There are issues, barriers and challenges and then there are ISSUES, BARRIERS and CHALLENGES that need attention, inquiry and work.

    As an example ego reactivity is an issue that needs exploration, but taking ourselves to be a separate individual is an ISSUE that needs exploration. ISSUES are more fundamental, more subtle and more entrenched than issues – and we all know how relentless issues can be.

    Another ISSUE that will arise at some point is the habit of orienting from being in a body. Think about it – you’re always facing forward.

    Have you ever wondered about that?

    Have you ever considered the fact that the soul has no such orientation? There is no front or back, up or down, in or out in pure consciousness.

    Our biological orientation helps to constrain the freedom of our consciousness and possibilities.

    Another element in this is vision. Our eyes face forward. More than 50 percent of the cortex, the surface of the brain, is devoted to processing visual information. It makes sense that our ingrained orientation to our experience is forward-facing.

    It’s no big surprise

    No wonder we’re always ‘looking’ at our experience. When asked: “What’s happening now?,” How often do we find ourselves looking at our experience to answer that question?

    So, we’re separate from our experience and looking at it from a forward facing orientation, which is usually located in the head looking down or in.

    soul driving body

    Duh? So what?

    Say, you’re meditating. Which way are you facing internally? How much are your eyes involved in your focus or concentration?

    You see, the habit of the biology has been imbued into the experience of our soul. This is a very powerful form in the soul that needs to be worked with to free the soul’s potential.

    Working with this happens little by little, indirectly through long-term meditation and spiritual practice, but making it obvious allows us to work with it more directly and since it is more fundamental than most psychological and emotional content, more freedom, flexibility and resilience in this area will ripple out into other structures and patterns.

    Stepping away from your eyes

    We can start working with our fixated vision and forward-facing orientation by stepping away from our eyes in meditation. Our eyes are closed, so we don’t need to look in the direction of our nose. Since our meditation practice includes not following thought or images that arise, we don’t need to ‘face’ anything internally.

    In fact, we don’t even need to be in the head because awareness is everywhere and the eyes can’t look everywhere at once – try it. Looking everywhere at once is good exercise itself.

    If you simply play around with the notion of this, eventually a moment or two and then more will arise when you’re not facing anywhere. It’s novel. I found that the trick was in the play, in the lightheartedness and not taking it on as a project, but as a curiosity.

    Working from bed or the zafu

    When I was working with out-of-the-body experience, I began exploring ‘turning around in my body’ as a way of loosening the ties with it. Unbeknownst to me, this actually began challenging “facing my experience,” eventually leading to the 360-degree experience of the soul.

    The 360 degree orientation of the soul isn’t circular (two-dimensional) or spherical (three-dimensional) because it includes inter and intra dimensional. So, it’s every-which-way at once or directionless.

    Lie in bed on your back. As you lay there just close your eyes, relax, turn over in your body, and look through the bed at the floor. At first, you’re just imagining it, but if you stay with it, a more kinesthetic sense of it will arise in awareness (awaring) – confusion is most likely to arise as to which way the body is actually facing.

    As I said, have fun with it. Be like a little kid, don’t go out and play to have (create) fun. Let the fun extend and express itself in the play – put your head where your feet are!

    If you’re sitting or meditating, simply turn around in your body while you sit. Your body is facing one way, you’re facing 180 degrees the other way.

    If and when, you feel tension in the head or body – YOU’RE NOT PLAYING! Relax, this isn’t JOB One.

    Leave questions and comments below about your play time.

    Leaving you with a quote from A. H. Almaas, Diamond Heart Book 4

    When you see how fundamental, how pervasive, how deep and entrenched your physical orientation is, you will notice that you don’t look at even your deep experiences from a total perspective. You look at them from the perspective of the body, from the physical perspective. Most of your issues arise from that perspective. When you feel that you are disappearing, what is it that is disappearing? Usually, it’s the image of your body You are terrified because you believe your physical body is the most important, fundamental, lasting real, fundamental, solid you. If that goes, you go. You don’t think, “I’m just seeing myself from a different place. My perception is detaching from the physical senses, and as a result, I am seeing something deeper than the physical.” If you do see it that way, you won’t feel that you are disappearing. You will be aware that you are not just seeing through your physical senses. Then there will be no fear, and no reason for the terror. So the source of the terror is our belief that the physical body is who we are—fundamentally and ultimately.

  • Death Wish: A Meditation Dream

    Death Wish: A Meditation Dream

    Go ahead, make my day…

    The gun didn’t scare me, nor did the guy holding it that was going to kill me. In fact, I was intrigued, curious to the nth degree – what would death be like? What would I experience? Would I experience? Who would experience, if there was experience? If there was experience, would there be a transition from one state of awareness and consciousness to another?

    I leaned into the gun until the muzzle was touching my forehead – directly at the third eye. “Go ahead,” I invited. I relaxed and centered my focus and  on simple being – breathe grasshopper…

    Did the gun fire? Is my body dead while my awareness/consciousness remains? If death was instantaneous, I probably wouldn’t have registered the event. “What’s my experience now?,” goes through my head(?), mind(?), consciousness(?).

    “If my brain is dead,” I think(?), “then I probably wouldn’t be thinking like this.” What would the experience be?

    My state is suddenly much more subtle – not so much heavy self-reflective thinking, more like deep, relaxed meditation. I recognize this state and am aware that if grasped at, it will disappear. Relaxing more (who/what relaxes?), the state envelopes me(?) more – absorbs me(?) – just the state now. A self-aware state. No where to go, no where to be – a simple experience, complete in itself.

    “Wait a sec,” I think(?) “What about all those different planes/dimensions of existence that many spiritual traditions speak of?”

    I realize that I am dreaming and have the freedom to explore possibilities beyond the limits of waking life. I head out for the far country where I can be many, any I(s). Where living, dying, flying and enlightenment are possibilities.

    I wake up on Easter Sunday, I’m a year older. Now there is a miracle – overnight, I aged a year!

  • What is Meditation?

    What is Meditation?

    Origin of the English Word Meditation

    ‘Meditation’ – derived from the Latin meditatio, from a verb meditari, meaning “to think, contemplate, devise, ponder”.

    Interesting that the word’s English origins point toward more engaged mental activity than I tend to associate with meditation. To me, even contemplation involves less active thinking and more pondering or a daydreaming (floating thoughts) quality. I’ve never been interested in meditation for stress relief or feeling better about myself or life. For me, meditation is about allowing what is more subtle and real to rise more to the foreground of experience – to the point where the meditator and the meditating are one.

    In the Old Testament, hagâ means to sigh or murmur, and also, to meditate. When the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek, hagâ became the Greek melete. The Latin Bible then translated hagâ/melete into meditatio. The use of the term meditatio as part of a formal, stepwise process of meditation goes back to the 12th-century monk Guigo II.

    Sighing and murmuring link meditation to the breath and chanting or mantras in my thinking.

    The Tibetan word for meditation “Gom” means “to become familiar with” and has the strong implication of training the mind to be familiar with states that are beneficial: concentration, compassion, correct understanding, patience, humility, perseverance, etc.

    For me, ‘to become familiar with,’ points to absorption and the nondual – knowing by being.

    ‘Meditation’ was introduced as a translation for Eastern spiritual practices, referred to as dhyana in Buddhism and in Hinduism.

    Dhyan is a state of pure consciousness, which transcends the inner and outer senses. The climax of Dhyan is samadhi. In Indian tradition, it is used for inner soul growth. Western psychologists link it with mental concentra-tion and consider it a special state of mind. But this is only the early phase of Dhyan.

    The term ’Dhyan’ comes from ’dhyai’ dhatu used in ’lat’ pratyaya. Its meaning is contemplation or the natural tendency and direction of senses. Patanjal Yogashastra links it with ekagrata or concentration. According to Sri Aurobindo, Dhyan is that state in which the inner mind tries to see the reality behind things. Ekagrata means focusing the consciousness on one point or object and keeping it steady in one state. In yoga, ekagrata is achieved when the mind is deeply engrossed in a special condition like quietude, or action or aspiration or resolve. This is called meditation.  Read more»

    History of Meditation

    Some of the earliest references to meditation are found in the Hindu Vedas (1500 BCE). Around the 6th to 5th centuries BCE, other forms of meditation developed in Taoist China and Buddhist India.

    In the west, by 20 BCE Philo of Alexandria had written on some form of “spiritual exercises” involving attention (prosoche) and concentration and by the 3rd century Plotinus had developed meditative techniques.

    Philo’s primary importance is in the development of the philosophical and theological foundations of Christianity.

    Plotinus developed a complex spiritual cosmology involving three elements: the One, the Intelligence, and the Soul. It is from the productive unity of these three Beings that all existence emanates, according to Plotinus.

    The Pali Canon, which dates to 1st century BCE considers Indian Buddhist meditation as a step towards salvation. The Vimalakirti Sutra which dates to 100 CE included a number of passages on meditation. Around 1227, D?gen wrote the instructions for Zazen.

    In his “Universally Recommended Practices for Zazen” Fukanzazengi he says, “The zazen I speak of is not meditation practice [in the traditional Buddhist sense]. It is simply the Dharma gate of peace and bliss, the practice-realization of totally culminated awakening.” Dogen’s zazen is a ritual expression and celebration of awakening already present. He repeatedly emphasizes the oneness of practice-realization, in which practice does not lead through one’s own efforts to some subsequent realization. For example, in 1241 he said, “Know that buddhas in the buddha way do not wait for awakening.” Read more»

    The Islamic practice of Dhikr had involved the repetition of the 99 Names of God since the 8th or 9th century. Between the 10th and 14th centuries, hesychasm was developed, particularly on Mount Athos in Greece, and involves the repetition of the Jesus prayer. Christian meditation progressed from the 6th century practice of Bible reading among Benedictine monks called Lectio Divina, i.e. divine reading. Its four formal steps as a “ladder” were defined by the monk Guigo II in the 12th century with the Latin terms lectio, meditatio, oratio, and contemplatio (i.e. read, ponder, pray, contemplate).

    Secular forms of meditation started appearing in India in the 1950s and migrated to the United States in the 1960s.

    Reading about the etymology and history of ‘meditation’ gives me some insight into how the meaning of a word evolves through time and cultures, but also how the mind reifies concepts. It’s also interesting to note, my opinion, that as meditation became more secular, it seems to have lost much of its spiritual, transcendent and transformational power. A daily sitting practice can be one of the simplest, yet challenging forms of meditation.

     Simply sitting and meditating is not necessarily practice. Practice requires true intention, true motivation, true devotion to the truth. Otherwise, we are not practicing or engaging the work.  A. H. Almaas – Runaway Realization

  • The Abandoned Meditator

    The Abandoned Meditator

    Does Meditation Need Me?

     Is your day ever like this?

    I wake up. Lie in bed a bit. Sense, Look and Listen.
    I get out of bed, go to the bathroom, brush teeth, put some water on hair and comb, splash some water on face…
    Now it’s time to meditate. I go to the meditation chair and get situated. I do an Om salutation and I meditate.
    My meditation practice ends. I rise from the chair, leave the bedroom and…

    I had many of those days until I looked more deeply into the process and considered a different perspective. Here is the rub with that whole scenario – ‘I.’

    Do you see it? ‘I’ wake up. ‘I’ get out of bed. ‘I’… I’m even meditating!

    My whole day begins with ‘I’ and chances are it’s going to tend to stay in that groove.

    Consider this: everything is already enlightened. This would include us. Perhaps we are not aware of this and this is part of why we meditate – to ‘do’ our part toward waking up.

    meditator meditation sittingWhat is meditation?

    From a dictionary: Meditation – the action or practice of meditating.

    Note: there is no ‘I’ in that definition. Can action and practice happen without an ‘I?’ Every nondual teacher says so. Let’s take them at their word. Our ‘I’ automatically inserts itself into any action or practice. I believe I’m needed!

    These days I think of meditation and meditating as something that is always happening, like enlightenment. In fact, I think enlightenment is meditating me. Every moment of my day, I’m in meditation – whether I’m aware of it or not. I’m being meditated from the inside out, the outside in and every other way possible.

    Waking up, brushing teeth, sitting to sit – it’s all meditation happening.

    The perspective of everything is already enlightened and meditation happening at all times helps to end the divisiveness that ‘I’ provides. With this, I can simply sit, or walk, or brush my teeth and let meditation do what it does. Meditation is more relaxed, more open to influence, more curious about mysteriousness.

    It’s true – I still wake up, do those things and wind up in that chair, but each movement has less ownership by ’I’ and more inclusion.

     

     

     

     

     

    ass meditator meditation

    My Ass

     I used to have
    The most obnoxious
    Worrisome, and stubborn
    Ass
    It was a bother and burden
    I would wish on no one
    So, I could not
    In all good conscious
    Rid my self of it
    Then, a Friend
    Told me of a method
    To break my ass
    Of all its contrariness
    So, I bought a chair
    And every day
    I made my ass
    Sit in that chair
    Oh! what fights and struggles we had
    That lazy ass so resistant to ever
    Going anywhere or doing any real work
    Now, could not and would not
    Sit still
    But, my Friend
    Had warned me of this stage
    So, I persisted
    In putting my ass in that chair
    Ignoring all of its
    Childish braying and petulance
    Slowly over time
    That chair
    Responded to the weight
    Of my ass
    Molding itself
    Into the only place
    My ass was ever
    Really relaxed and comfortable
    Now
    I could not get my ass
    Out of that chair
    It refused to be
    Anywhere else
    So, I left my ass
    In that chair
    While I went about
    My daily affairs
    Until one day
    My ass
    Disappeared
    And
    Took me with it

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    ass stuck in meditation
  • Continual Practice

    Continual Practice

     Going Nowhere Meditation

    meditation chairOne gift of continual practice is that stopping and starting, beginning and ending our practice is no longer relevant.

    All practice involves awareness and presence.  As we know, these aspects of True Nature are fundamental to experience. Attending to and cultivating awareness and presence is practice. What difference does it make if we attend and cultivate when we sit or move, in silence or in chaos, at morning or at night?

    I used to think I needed to quiet my mind to meditate and practice – ha! Presence and awareness are just as much a part of both. When I meditate in this chair with the window open, what difference is it to me if a truck goes by, or people walk by talking, or birds sing or it is the middle of the night and dead calm? Practice is being with awareness and presence.

    And, it’s not like there is only 10% presence in cacophony. There is 100% presence in any situation or circumstances. Practice is not to go from 10% presence to 100% presence because there is nowhere to go, it’s all 100%, but I may not experience pure presence as I am there to some degree. What I can do is bring 100% of me to whatever degree of presence I am experiencing and forget about changing anything.

    If our mind is chattering, why not tend to the presence in that experience? If our mind wanders, instead of leaving that experience and starting over, why not simply tend to the presence in the wandering?

    So as we learn to value not arriving, we arrive, for true arriving is a matter of not leaving, not departing. Usually, we are always leaving ourselves, always departing; and we think we are going someplace. When we try to go someplace, all we end up doing is separating from our true nature. We are always trying to find our true nature by going away from it. So inquiry takes us to the point where we simply recognize how we are leaving—and the ideas and beliefs that make us feel that we should leave. When it truly reveals its fundamental ground, inquiry teaches us not to go anywhere—because there is nowhere to go. – A. H. Almaas, Spacecruiser Inquiry

    meditation practice

    Think of continual practice as a river. As we move through our day, the river flows. When we sit, we are like a pool in the river. The water is presence, the state of dynamism doesn’t decrease water being 100% water.

    On this planet, water flows according to topography and gravity. Water doesn’t care about obstacles, why should we? If we encounter an obstacle, why not be like water behind a damn – let our awareness of presence build in the immediacy of being with the obstacle. Eventually, we may discover the obstacle is merely presence, or the obstacle will no longer be able to hold back the presence or we will simply reach a point where we overflow the obstacle.

    Why concern ourselves with outcomes when we can simply be with presence and allow nature to take its course?

Open-Secrets